SharePost: Women's Bodies and TIME
TIME magazine has placed a photograph of an Afghan woman for their issue on "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan." No question mark. The woman is missing her nose.
And there was controversy.
And I rather like Sepia Mutiny's coverage of it too.
I find it ironic that everything the "pro-portrait" people have said prove the naysayers right.
"That is exactly what will happen," said Manizha Naderi,
She's referring to the idea that the United States leaving Afghanistan will result in more mutilated women. Which is precisely what the naysayers say the cover is trying to manipulate you into thinking.
"The image is a window into the reality of what is happening - and what can happen - in a war that affects and involves all of us," [Richard Stengel, Time's managing editor] wrote in a statement on Time’s Web site.
Yes, it's a reality in which you use a woman's mutilated face to symbolically refer to the violation and ruin Afghanistan will suffer when you leave the Afghans to run their own country thus making a short-hand argument for continued occupation. By highlighting the woman's need for rescue, you're trying to invoke US to chivalry. You impose on a global stage patriarchal norms that turn not just this woman into someone helpless and silent, but US into a nation in need of living up to the ill-conceived "masculine ideal."
By using this portrait, TIME defines (poorly but decidedly) Afghanistan-US relations. This makes for a poor beginning to a mature and real discussion on whether we should or should not be in Afghanistan. I don't have a particular opinion on the occupation myself (I'm still stuck on how we should never have gone there in the first place), but what a different discussion this would be if you had, for instance, put pictures of the countless Afghan casualties on the cover instead? What keeps disappearing from the table is the damage our presence enacts on them.
All I'm asking for is a bit more balance. I think TIME lacks it.
And there was controversy.
And I rather like Sepia Mutiny's coverage of it too.
I find it ironic that everything the "pro-portrait" people have said prove the naysayers right.
"That is exactly what will happen," said Manizha Naderi,
She's referring to the idea that the United States leaving Afghanistan will result in more mutilated women. Which is precisely what the naysayers say the cover is trying to manipulate you into thinking.
"The image is a window into the reality of what is happening - and what can happen - in a war that affects and involves all of us," [Richard Stengel, Time's managing editor] wrote in a statement on Time’s Web site.
Yes, it's a reality in which you use a woman's mutilated face to symbolically refer to the violation and ruin Afghanistan will suffer when you leave the Afghans to run their own country thus making a short-hand argument for continued occupation. By highlighting the woman's need for rescue, you're trying to invoke US to chivalry. You impose on a global stage patriarchal norms that turn not just this woman into someone helpless and silent, but US into a nation in need of living up to the ill-conceived "masculine ideal."
By using this portrait, TIME defines (poorly but decidedly) Afghanistan-US relations. This makes for a poor beginning to a mature and real discussion on whether we should or should not be in Afghanistan. I don't have a particular opinion on the occupation myself (I'm still stuck on how we should never have gone there in the first place), but what a different discussion this would be if you had, for instance, put pictures of the countless Afghan casualties on the cover instead? What keeps disappearing from the table is the damage our presence enacts on them.
All I'm asking for is a bit more balance. I think TIME lacks it.